Stay
by intastella burst
Summary: The sub leaves first thing in the morning. Sawyer/Juliet. References to Sawyer/Kate and Juliet/Jack.


It's nearly dark out, and Juliet isn't back yet. He doesn't know why he cares or why it's making it so damn hard to concentrate on his Dharma-brand dinner, but he thinks that it would be pretty anticlimactic if she were eaten by a boar or something similarly normal after all they'd been through together.

After all they'd been through, he means.

She's sitting on the end of the dock when he finds her (_he should have known_), feet dangling off the side, pant cuffs rolled up to her knees. He thinks it's bizarrely cute.

Her yearning to be gone, to be as far as possible from this place, is tangible in the very lines of her body, and he's almost afraid to breathe for a moment, ridiculously afraid that even that slight motion will send her tumbling off.

The sub leaves first thing in the morning.

She turns her head away, blinking rapidly as he approaches, his footsteps almost obnoxiously loud against the still swish of the waves. He stops a few feet away, unwilling to intrude on whatever it is that she's doing.

"I can see you there, you know." Her voice is too nonchalant to be all right.

He plops down beside her and pulls his boots and socks off, clumps of dirt showering the wooden planks below him, and she rolls her eyes with the patience of the long-suffering.

"Wasn't hiding. I was just admiring the view." He grins mock-lecherously, making it ambiguous as to whether he's referring to the hastening sunset or to her.

She laughs, the barest edge of something sharp infiltrating the high notes, her hand going to her face as though to brush away a stray strand of hair, but he sees the pink rimming her eyes and knows better. "So what brings you here?"

He thinks he detects the faintest hint of accusation lacing the _you_, and thinks it'd be best to try and lighten the mood. "Just thought I'd let you know that if you don't skedaddle, our favorite Ghostbuster is going to scarf down all the Dharma wine. Bastard already finished the beer."

She trails her feet in concentric circles in the water and nudges him in a way that's almost gentle. "I'm pretty sure that was you, Mr. Teetotaler."

He snickers. He likes her like this, when she's willing to play along with his games. Almost friendly. "Semantics." He drops his feet, and hisses at the sudden shock of the chilly liquid on his warm skin. "Sonofabitch!"

He looks back at her; something has passed through her in the moment between, and her eyes are sad and deep now, and when she smiles the look is so frighteningly _not there_, so close to breaking, that he wishes she could take it back. "Why are you really here, James?" Each word is measured, self-aware.

That throws him for a loop. _Because I was worried about you, because I really do like the view, because you could be killed by a polar bear and I don't think I could stand it if _you_ left me too. _There are so many possible answers, all true, some more so than others, none of which he's willing to own to, and his reflexive jab comes out harsher than he'd intended. "Why are _you_ here, Juliet?"

She sucks her breath in slowly and studies her splayed hands, pressed flat to her rigid knees. When she looks up, the lines of her face are set and, swear to God, he's pretty sure that she hasn't let that breath out yet.

"It's been a month." He can barely hear her inflection above the steady slapping of the water, but the words fall heavily into his lap all the same. Her gaze is challenging, and so calm that he knows there's no way it's easy for her to maintain.

He has to look away.

She lets out a weary humorless chuckle, so soft he almost doesn't catch it. "Well, technically it won't happen for about thirty years yet, but it's only been a month in our perceptions." She touches his arm, so quickly, so lightly, that he almost thinks he imagined it. "You can't tell me that you don't think about it too."

_Only every minute of every day, _he wants to say, but that's too sarcastic and also too true, and so he just nods.

The fading sunlight makes her skin luminous, and he so desperately wants to touch it, to feel if she's as fragile as she looks. Maybe she senses it, this weird thing tingling in the air between them, because she closes her eyes, dark lashes on porcelain, and he can see her resetting something in her mind. "You think about her."

Something in the general vicinity of his ribcage jolts painfully, because it's true, though he doesn't necessarily want it to be, and if she wants to play touchy-feely, hey, he can do that too. "You think about him." It comes out like an indictment.

She opens her eyes and meets his gaze, too evenly. "I asked first."

Technically, she hasn't asked anything, and neither has he. The question mark is implicit, the figurative elephant in the room.

"It's not a fair question." He mutters that, leans back on his hands (_the wood beneath his palms is splintery, but he doesn't mind_), stares steadfastly at the horizon, and tries not to crack. He can almost see the column of black smoke--_alert: doom, death, disaster!_--rising from the sea.

He watches her out of the corner of his eye (_he can't help it_), and sees something melt on her face, or in her eyes, or within her soul, or wherever the hell these melty feelings come from. "No," she whispers. She shakes her head carefully and raises a trembling hand, as though to touch him again. (_He finds that he wants her to_.) "No, it isn't fair at all." Her voice quivers gently and her hand doesn't quite make it to him, because suddenly the tears are coming fast and furious and she's doing her best to stem the flow, but it's no use, and he stares because he's never seen her lose control like this, and it's almost indecent, witnessing this moment that he was so clearly never meant to see.

He makes a quiet noise of sympathy in his throat and she flinches away, half-hysterical. "No--don't. I'm fine, I'm all right. I'm sorry. God, I'm so _sorry_--"

He can't speak, and so he does the only thing he knows how: he scooches closer and runs his hand tentatively down her back; she shudders at the contact, drawing even closer into herself, but when she doesn't crumble he pulls her to him with both arms, and she doesn't resist, and that's all the permission he needs.

He thinks it must've been months, even years since she'd let herself just go like this, because each sob is raw and sounds like it's been ripped from her chest. He buries his face in her fine hair and lets a little moisture leak from his own eyes, because he knows she won't mind, and if questioned he can always blame the ray of dying sunlight that just happens to be striking directly at his eyes.

Her delicate hand, her healer's hand, makes a fist in the flannel of his shirt and when she exhales he can feel the tension in her limbs slipping away as easily as though from his own.

They stay like that for he doesn't know how long. The sun goes down on their entwined figures, and when the night air makes her shiver he only holds her closer, and when the even rhythm of her breathing tells him that she's drifted off to sleep, he thinks that maybe, just maybe, they've both finally got something to stay for.


End file.
